Free Republic

A legal advocacy group advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the 1980s actively opposed conservative Robert H. Bork's nomination to the high court calling him a "threat" to the "civil rights of the Latino community." The Senate went on to reject President Reagan's nominee in 1987. The revelation is included in 350 pages of documents the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund delivered to the senators late Tuesday evening. Judge Sotomayor worked for PRLDEF in various capacities from 1980 until she became a federal judge in 1992, spending most of her time as a board member. The...

August 28, 2009 Kennedy, Bork and the Politics of Judicial Destruction TOBIN HARSHAW The death of a public figure, especially a polarizing one, always makes things a bit dicey in opinionland. Do the detractors speak ill of the dead? Do the defenders pre-empt such criticisms, or does that just inspire the critics? In the case of Ted Kennedy, whose many accomplishments got due recognition everywhere, most chose to duck the fight on anything more problematic. There was comparatively little talk about a Harvard scandal, a very sad end to a first marriage or a controversial rape trial. Even among the...

The death of Senator Edward Kennedy from a malignant brain tumor superimposes somber intimations of mortality onto a frequently frivolous political scene. It puts us in mind us of what Wordsworth called the "fallings from us, vanishings" that ultimately reconcile us to our own mortality. As a young man Senator Kennedy became, as he is today, the pillar of a large extended family. We extend our sympathies to his family upon his death. Senator Kennedy became the lion of the Senate and of American liberalism. For better or worse, his legislative accomplishments have done much to shape the United States...

Senator Ted Kennedy has died.

Legal scholar and former U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork tells Newsmax he doesn't believe court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's assertion that she is "entirely governed by law," as he believes she should be. In an exclusive interview, he also said Sotomayor, who's going through confirmation hearings before a Senate panel, should be disqualified from consideration because of a statement she made. And Bork stated that the Roe v. Wade decision has been the "most dangerous" the Supreme Court has ever made because it has "embittered our politics." See Video: Judge Robert Bork discusses Sonia Sotomayor and the Senate hearings -...

WASHINGTON – A Puerto Rican civil rights organization advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor campaigned against seating conservative Robert Bork on the high court in the late 1980s, according to new documents that shed light on the group that's become a key focus of Republicans questioning Sotomayor's fitness to be a justice. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund officially opposed GOP nominee Bork in 1987, "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the Latino community," its president reported in one of several documents from the group that the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday....

Robert Bork says choosing Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court was 'a bad mistake.'Excerpt: His name has become a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've been blocked from appointment to public office, you've been "borked." Robert Bork was derailed in 1987 by a hostile Senate. Bork sat down with NEWSWEEK for a rare interview. Pres Obama has spoken of empathy as his key standard for choosing judicial nominees. What do you think of that approach? .......at a minimum it means you want a judge who will depart from the meaning of the constitution when a sympathetic case...

His name has become a verb, one so crisp and eloquent that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary: if you've been blocked from appointment to public office, you've been "borked." The term's namesake is Robert Bork, whose path to the Supreme Court was derailed in 1987 by a hostile Senate. As Sonia Sotomayor braces for the same firing line, Bork, 82, sat down with NEWSWEEK for a rare interview. Excerpts: Was it your view that the law on abortion should be left totally to the democratic process? I oppose abortion. But an amazing number of people thought that...

The continuing contemporary interest in Thomas More (1478-1535) is hardly to be accounted for by popular fascination with sixteenth-century English politics or even by admiration for a martyr to a religious cause no longer universally popular. St. Thomas More (1477-1535) More lived, as we live today, in a time of rapid social and cultural unraveling. The meaning of his life, at least for us, is not so much his worldly success and religious piety, extraordinary as both of these were, but rather the courage and consistency with which he opposed the forces of disintegration. The culture war of the early...

No one suggests that the GOP should sink this low. But they also need not fear to ask tough questions of Sotomayer!Within 45 minutes of the July 1st announcement by President Reagan that he had selected Robert Bork to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court Senator Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor and unleashed this fireball of hate. The speech was telecast live on national TV: SEN. KENNEDY: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in...

Part 3 of a symposium on the career of Judge Robert Bork and the publication of A Time to Speak. Part 1. Part 2.When Slouching Toward Gomorrah appeared, it bore on its dust jacket a few words of mine praising the book and its distinguished author: “The ideological triumph of liberalism among American elites, far from bringing the individual and social enlightenment it promised, has produced unprecedented decay. The principal victims of this decay are the poorest and most vulnerable among us, those most in need of a healthy culture. Bork courageously and boldly states these truths. A judge as...

February 13Judge Robert Bork discusses concerns about potential infringement upon religious freedom under the new administration

Washington DC, Jan 21, 2009 / 03:19 am (CNA).- Former Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork has predicted that upcoming legal battles will have significant ramifications for religious freedom. He names as issues of major concern the continued freedom of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions and the likely “terrible conflict” resulting from the advancement of homosexual rights. Speaking in an interview published Tuesday by Cybercast News Service, Judge Bork discussed the contentious nature of modern politics. “Everything is up for debate these days. I can’t think of anything that isn’t,” he said. “You are going to get Catholic...

Robert Bork talked about his book A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments (Intercollegiate Studies Institute; November 15, 2008). The book collects more than sixty articles from the past forty years on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law. It also includes several of his judicial opinions and transcribed oral arguments. He was interviewed at his home in McLean, Virginia, by guest interviewer Eugene Meyer. Robert H. Bork is the author several books including Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline and The Tempting...

Senator Biden said the following during the 10/2/08 VP Debate: And it didn't take me long -- it was hard to change, but it didn't take me long, but it took about five years for me to realize that the ideology of that judge makes a big difference. That's why I led the fight against Judge Bork. Had he been on the court, I suspect there would be a lot of changes that I don't like and the American people wouldn't like, including everything from Roe v. Wade to issues relating to civil rights and civil liberties.

There is something curious about the release of traffic and court records about Sarah and Todd Palin over the last 48 hours. Who released this information over the Labor Day weekend, when all government offices were closed? Why did McCain/RNC send a team of lawyers to Alaska to "investigate" the release of information? Why did Sarah Palin suddenly hire a personal lawyer in regards to the "troopergate" investigation? Is it possible the release of information was not legal? Was it done by the state police or other people in the Alaska government who are enemies of Palin? What if the...

Biden is no threat to Obama - but no asset In rejecting Hillary Clinton for a politician with a murky record, the presidential candidate may have lost the White House William Rees-Mogg Joe Biden has one crucial qualification to be the next vice-president of the United States, at least in the eyes of Barack Obama. He is not Hillary Clinton. Mr Obama has made the opposite decision to the one made by another young and relatively inexperienced Senator in 1960. John F.Kennedy distrusted and detested Lyndon Johnson, but he asked him to become his running- mate in the election because...

McCain: Bork Was No "Maverick Jurist" John McCain is planning to be in North Carolina tomorrow where he is scheduled to give a speech on judicial nominations: John McCain’s campaign said Friday that Fred Thompson and Sam Brownback will join the presumptive GOP nominee in North Carolina next week for a major speech on judicial appointments. Both Thompson and Brownback have endorsed the Arizona senator, and both Republicans presented themselves throughout the Republican primary battle as “consistent conservatives,” particularly regarding social issues and judicial appointments. The speech, to be held Tuesday at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, will be just...

Judge Bork said that if one of them is the nomination, the conservative moment is in trouble, because "neither one of them is remotely a conservative."

Noted conservative jurist Judge Robert Bork endorsed Governor Mitt Romney for President of the United States Saturday.Joining Romney for President, Judge Bork said, "Throughout my career, I have had the honor of serving under several Presidents and am proud to make today's endorsement. No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney. He knows firsthand how the judicial branch can profoundly affect the future course of a state and a nation. I greatly admired his leadership in Massachusetts in the way that he responded to the activist court's ruling legalizing same-sex 'marriage.' His...

Judge Robert Bork has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. He explains: No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney. He knows firsthand how the judicial branch can profoundly affect the future course of a state and a nation. I greatly admired his leadership in Massachusetts in the way that he responded to the activist court's ruling legalizing same-sex 'marriage.' Our next President may be called upon to make more than one Supreme Court nomination, and Governor Romney is committed to nominating judges who take their oath of office seriously and respect the...

Joining Romney for President, Judge Bork said, “Throughout my career, I have had the honor of serving under several Presidents and am proud to make today’s endorsement. No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney. He knows firsthand how the judicial branch can profoundly affect the future course of a state and a nation. I greatly admired his leadership in Massachusetts in the way that he responded to the activist court’s ruling legalizing same-sex ‘marriage.’ His leadership on the issue has served as a model to the nation on how to...

If you think American politics have gotten nastier, crueler, and more symbolic over the last 20 years, blame Ted Kennedy. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the borking of Judge Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan’s failed Supreme Court nominee. And it was Ted Kennedy’s bilious bugle blast that brought the man down. Almost immediately after Reagan nominated Bork, Kennedy pulled himself off his barstool and proclaimed: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could...

Last week Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Scooter Libby to 30 months in the federal penitentiary for allegedly lying about a crime that never occurred and didn't exist. While everything about the case qualifies as script material for The Twilight Zone, acknowledging plot contributions from both Kafka and Heller, the newer developments owe more to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. *** What is newly very apparent is the personal animus that Judge Walton has displayed towards those who have sprung to Libby's defense. *** Judge Walton's order allowing the 12 to file their brief was short, formulaic, curt. It contained...

Robert H. Bork (1927-    ): American jurist, Yale law professor, U.S. Solicitor General (1973-77), judge for federal Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. (1982-88), Supreme Court nominee, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute; converted in 2003 from Protestant background Robert Bork, the Culture War, and the Catholic Church Judge Robert Bork, a conservative legal and judicial champion well-known to American readers, was received into the Catholic Church on July 21, 2003, at age 76. Most readers will remember Judge Bork because of his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. An outspoken conservative, Bork was...

NOTE: I believe that one of the many reasons the Dems won last night was because of the President's failure to stand up and fight them. And the GOP senate failed to fight them. No decent judge is going to be confirmed in the next two years. Bush could show that he is not going to kowtow by nominating good solid judges who believe in the Constitution and, if the Dems fail to confirm qualified judges, he needs to recess appoint. Can you imagine how the conservative base would stand up and cheer if Robert Bork went to the bench...

Justice Scalia’s argument about the death penalty has two aspects. The first concerns the duty of the judge; the second has to do with the respect owed by Catholics to the Pope’s call for the virtual abolition of the penalty in Evangelium Vitae. As to the first, the duty of the judge, there can, it seems to me, be no reasonable disagreement. The Constitution several times explicitly recognizes capital punishment, leaving legislatures free to choose or reject that sanction. Most American legislatures have chosen it. By what warrant, then, can a Justice of the Supreme Court abolish what the Constitution...

How liberals are using international law to promote their agenda and create a boomerang effect in the United States:  By creating novel new international laws, the New Class hopes to outflank American legislatures and courts by having liberal views adopted abroad (by foreign governments and organizations such as the United Nations) and then imposed on the United States.This approach is working. These new laws boomerang back to the United States; courts now cite the decisions of foreign courts in “interpreting” our Constitution.  Radical decisions on social issues, values, religion, and speech that are made by foreign legislatures and courts...

It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...

Democrats — at least those seeking the Democratic nomination for president and those who are desperate for money from extremist Left deep pockets — are trying to "out-Liberal" each other on the Alito nomination, even when it is clear a bipartisan majority of senators intend to make the Judge Alito "Justice Alito" in just a few days. John Kerry, after launching the first international filibuster from the slopes of the Swiss Alps with the help of Ted Kennedy, gave a speech earlier on the Senate floor that rivals Kennedy’s 1987 smear of Judge Bork. Kennedy claimed that in “Judge Bork’s...

With at least 52 Senators already on record in support, it's clear that--short of some smear ex machina--liberal Democrats can't stop Samuel Alito from being confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court. So it's a good moment to consider what this says about our politics and what it means for the Court as it enters a new era. One conclusion is that the confirmation of both Chief Justice John Roberts and Judge Alito marks the most important domestic success for President Bush since his 2003 tax cuts. These look like legacy picks. Despite the Harriet Miers misstep, Mr. Bush...

A year after Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination was scuttled by the Senate, federal prosecutor Samuel Alito called Bork "one of the most outstanding nominees of the century.'' Eighteen years later, the comment must have seemed like a godsend to Democrats hoping to paint Alito as a reactionary unsuited for the high court. But when a senator confronted him with his words, Alito said he had only been expressing admiration for Bork, and loyalty to the administration that appointed them both. He insisted he wasn't endorsing Bork's views on topics such as abortion, voting rights and presidential power. It was...

With the battle over the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court set to take center stage on Monday, the American people have undoubtedly become familiar in past weeks with his critics -- along with their criticisms, attacks and mischaracterizations. If the best predictor of future behavior is past performance, then it is reasonable to expect that a host of rather predictable, knee-jerk criticisms -- which have already been refuted with fact -- will be leveled against this fine nominee in a misguided effort to discredit his qualifications. As a preview of the coming debate, here...

The lesson of Reagan's nominee is: Say just as little as you possibly canMedia critic Danny Schechter was referring to television when he titled one of his books "The More You Watch, the Less You Know.'' But he just as well might have been describing the trend in Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Consider Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagan's nominee for a seat on the court in 1987, and the last nominee to be defeated on the Senate floor. There's still bitterness among Bork's supporters -- who coined the term "Borking'' for the destruction of a Supreme Court candidacy -- but...

The following is an email that I received from a friend regarding Judge Robert Bork's letter to the Wall Street Journal... "Eric Felten's essay on the dry martini is itself near-perfect ('Don't Forget the Vermouth,' Leisure & Arts, Pursuits, Dec. 10). His allusion to constitutional jurisprudence is faulty, however, since neither in law nor martinis can we know the subjective 'original intent' of the Founding Fathers. As to martinis, the intent may have been to ease man's passage through this vale of tears or, less admirably, to employ the tactic of 'candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.' What counts...

It is premature to pronounce the job completed, but with the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for a seat on the Supreme Court, George Bush has substantially narrowed the rift with his conservative base he created with his nomination of Harriet Miers. Ms. Miers, a woman of many fine qualities, was perceived as simply lacking the constitutional sophistication to withstand the pressures of a liberal Court majority and its allies in the academy and the media sufficiently to help bring the Court back from its self-assumed role as a political rather than...

Ten days ago I wrote about the Miers nomination in light of Judge Bork's introduction to a new book of essays on SCOTUS. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, Judge Bork weighs in with a denunciation of the Miers nomination, which includes the fairly astonishing sentence: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative (amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while maintaining its unconstitutionality). This is the same as arguing that "Except for opposing Hitler and later warning of...

Is "miered" the new "borked"? Robert Bork's failed nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 spawned the verb "borked," defined loosely as getting rejected in an unseemly, even unfair, manner. Now there is talk online about whether Harriet Miers' withdrawal of her nomination to the high court will give rise to the term "miered." While liberals led to the opposition to Bork, it was conservatives who brought down Miers' nomination. A contributor to The Reform Club, a right-leaning blog, wrote that to get "borked" was "to be unscrupulously torpedoed by an opponent," while to get "miered" was to be "unscrupulously...

Operation Rescue renews its call for Miers’ withdrawalWashington, DC – The highly esteemed Judge Robert Bork weighed in yesterday on the controversial Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. Miers has been under scrutiny in the past week for having no paper trail or judicial experience.Former Federal Judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in an historically contentious battle in 1987, described the choice of Miers as “a disaster on every level.�Bork, considered the perhaps finest intellectual mind in the legal community, joins a growing number of conservatives expressing concern over the Miers nomination and...

"I am convinced, as I think almost all constitutional scholars are, that Roe v. Wade is an unconstitutional decision, a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority. I also think that Roe v. Wade is by no means the only example of such unconstitutional behavior by the Supreme Court." This bit of public truth-telling was committed by Robert Bork, then a professor at Yale Law School, when he testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on June 1, 1981. Ironically, Bork made this statement about Roe in the midst of testimony in which he explained why he opposed...

TO BORK VS. TO MIER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Yesterday on air Hugh Hewitt suggested to me that we here were trying to Bork Miers. No. This is new SCOTUS verb time. Andrew Breitbart just came up with over IM: to MIER: to put your own allies in the most untenable position possible based upon exceptionally bad decsion making. Secondary defintion: While steadlily going in reverse in the driveway of your own home, intentionally abruptly pressing gas pedal as to crash into garage door for no apparent reason. They'll be teaching this in AP Government classes before long. Posted at 02:26...

RE: OUCH [Rod Dreher] But Kathryn, I fully expect that if Justice Stevens retires, President Bush will nominate his dog Barney to fill that vacant seat. After all, who can a man trust to be loyal more than his dog? I reckon the president knows Barney's heart as well as anybody's, and certainly Barney has no paper trail, unless you count stuff he chewed up when he was a puppy. Besides, if Caligula can put his horse in the Senate... Posted at 06:16 PM http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_02_corner-archive.asp#078596

Some afternoon observations on Miers and "Borking." October 12, 2005 12:45 PM PST The verb "to Bork" has an origin in the 1987 treatment of Robert Bork by his opponents on the left. It was a dishonorable episode in American political history. From Wikipedia: According to the New York Times, the verb to bork might be defined as "to destroy a judicial nominee through a concerted attack on his character, background and philosophy." [1] The most famous (or infamous) use of the verb to bork occurred in July 1991 at a conference of the National Organization for Women in New...

RUSH: Jim Dobson recorded his radio show for today and tomorrow yesterday; the transcripts for that show are out. Now as you know, one of the things that irked Senator Specter is that Dobson admitted that maybe Karl Rove told him some things he "shouldn't know" – everybody assumed – when he called him to give him a heads-up on the nomination of Harriet Miers, the US Supreme Court. Well, everybody ran and rushed to judgment on that and said, "A-ha! A-ha! Rove told Dobson that she's a definite vote against Roe vs. Wade," which of course if that were...

I have in the past proudly called myself a "bushbot" on this forum. Initially I was disappointed, but supportive of this nomination. However, as time has gone by, enough has leaked out about Ms. Miers to make me seriously doubt that we can afford to take a chance on a woman who not only has no background in Constitutional Law whatsoever, but - and this is the key - has, according to reliable reports about her stint on the Dallas City Council, shown herself to be very vulnerable to the kind of "go along to get along" attitude that doomed...

Bork speaks out on CNN w/ Wolf Blitzer. Video below 1. Click on link below, then look for the "FREE" button, click on it. 2. Wait for download ticket counter to expire, click on filename (BorkOnCNN.rm) Click here to download video (Real Player)

Legendary conservative jurist Robert Bork is "borking" Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, trashing her nomination as a complete and total "disaster." Asked by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Friday night if he was impressed by Ms. Miers, Bork replied: "Not a bit. I think it's a disaster on every level." The Yale-trained judge said he didn't like the Texas attorney because she hadn't developed a "constitutional philosophy." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," he told Carlson. "I'm afraid she's likely to be influenced by factors,...

Who’d have known that Harriet Miers would have caused such a ruckus just by saying “yes”? At first blush, President Bush’s nomination of Miers as the successor to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor looked like a welcome indication that he wasn’t going to shoot a flamethrower at the neighbor’s parched lawn and laugh maniacally at the ensuing pandemonium. He could, after all, have poked the Democrats in the eye once again with Priscilla Owen, whom he obstinately wrestled onto the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Instead, he chose a trusted adviser who under other circumstances would have been considered an...

Other critics have expressed concern about her lack of experience grappling with constitutional reasoning. Robert Bork - whose nomination to the high court was rejected by the Senate in 1987 - called the choice of Miers "a disaster on every level." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," Bork said Friday on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson." "It's kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years."